Web browsing by nature is a very “reactive” process in which a software application (e.g., such as a web browser) navigates among web pages in response to user input such as, for example, a web address typed by a user or a mouse click on the currently displayed page. This “reactive” nature of the web browsing process, however, tends to diminish the quality of the user experience in certain circumstances.
For example, there are many users who have signed up for Fantasy Football leagues on Yahoo! sports. On a Sunday morning, a typical user would want to check his or her team roster before the games start. Under the current “reactive” browsing process, the user needs either to type into the browser the web address of the roster page for his or her Fantasy Football team, or to surf the “yahoo.com” web site in order to reach that roster page. For example, after logging into the “yahoo.com” web site, the user needs to click on a link to get to the sports web page, then click on a link thereon to get to the fantasy football league page, then click on a link thereon to get to the user's team page, and then click on a link therein to get to the page of the team's roster. However, each of these two cases of “reactive” browsing has its own disadvantages that diminish the quality of the user experience.
In the former case, while it may be possible for the user to type into the browser the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address of the web page that the user wants to visit, such URL address is typically long and complicated and hence difficult to remember, especially when the URL address requires parameter values needed to locate or to dynamically generate the desired web page. In the latter case, the user needs to click through several intervening web pages which, in addition to taking extra time and being rather annoying to the user, involves retrieval of unnecessary information because the content of the intervening pages needs to be retrieved and loaded by the browser even though such content is not of interest to the user at that particular time.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.